and the obama agenda, with us e.j. dionne, bbc world news america kattykay,peggynoonanand nbc news white house correspondent chuck todd. in our "meet the press" minute, january 1976, another time of economic turmoil presidential candidate senator lloyd benson offers practical advice to then president gerald ford on his upcoming state of the union address. >> we should be creating opportunity, what the people are looking for in this country is return of self confidence. >>> first, senior white house adviser jalry jarrett. welcome back to the program, to "meet the press." >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be here. >> there is news that i wanted to ask you about. osama bin dad laden has cut another video, is that his voice and is it striking that he appears back in charge of calling the the shots on running operations for al qaeda? >> we have no independent confirmation that that is his voice but let's look at it. the fact of the matter is he is a murderer, has attacked americans and he has killed more muslims than any other group in the region. the president is committed to going after al q

't matter. >>> coming up a littlelater,peggynoonanand eugene robinson will be here. >>> and when we come back, a look at mika's must-read opinion pages. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. >>> my name is scott brown. and i'm running for the united states senate. this is my truck. i put a lot of miles on it during this campaign. wherever i go, people tell me they're concerned about the path our country is on. spending is out of control. government keeps getting bigger and bigger. it's time for a new direction. i love this old truck. it's brought me closer to the people of this state. and i want to speak for them as their next united states senator. i'm scott brown and i approve this message because it's time we end business as usual in washington. >> hey, dad. >> martha knows the struggles massachusetts working families face because she's lived those struggles. she's fought for the people of massachusetts every single day. as attorney general, she took on wall street and recovered millions for massachusetts taxpayers. she went after big insurance companies, took on privator

? >> well, i mean, who's to blame? we hold the president responsible. he owns, you know--peggynoonanwrote this -- he owns the presidency. he can't just always blame it on the preceding -- he owns the presidency. his stimulus program was lousy, his health care program was lousy, the whole series of programs was lousy, and it means they don't know how to govern. it's not a campaign anymore. he's been on television so many times, nobody wants to listen to him anymore. his audience has dropped by a half. that is damaging to him. he's got to understand he's the president now. he's not a campaigner. and he's got to have a series of programs and he's got to do it in a way where they have a chance to work. >> so, does he need to do what bill clinton did at some point in his presidency after the '94 election. like, wait a minute now, let's look at this. >> right. >> he would go into the oval office, shut the down, and whatever time he was able to use to contemplate bigger issues, he'd also pick up the phone, call outsiders out of washington, get some advice from them. i mean, what about the

and a critique you hear of this president from both the left and theright.peggynoonansaid that on "meet the press" and moveon.org is saying that now. we elected a liberal president and where is that guy? but i think stay the course is a broader term than that. i mean, i don't give advice to presidents and they wouldn't listen to me if i did, but stay the course means, be yourself. the other phrase from that area was, you know, let reagan be reagan. this was used by so-called pragmatists in the white house. people who were getting the same grief rahm is getting now to let reagan be his inner-conservative self. but reagan was telling his people, i've got to get me a deal. reagan was a very pragmatic president. so if you think of stay the course in a broader way, i don't think president obama has to be an ideologue. >> the stay the course mantra back then was, stick to this program i'm on, it's going to pay dividends. but obama has something different to deal with that reagan didn't. reagan had a democratic congress to beat up on whenever he needed that boogiemen. he had to work with them,

incredible victim hoaxes. ilec margaret jonesakapeggyseltzer,j2 wrigh and then the one about the anti-muslim flares that were distributed at george washington and a conservative group. >> guest: that is in a long string of hate crimes. i only listed a small small for-- portion of them in my book. after 20 years they think all these hate crimes usually on college campuses have turned out to be hoaxes. the only surprise about a news showing up on a college campus these days would be a racist. it is always somebody trying to bring attention to racism and anti-semitism sexes them whenever and what is thought to be you know a burgeoning clan movement at columbia university. then the entire nation, i don't know if you remember that there was a professor at columbia i guess about two years ago who was in the middle of the plagiarism investigation. and suddenly lo and behold finds a news on her door and for weeks the entire nation was fixated on this case, and if you had been following the hate crimes for the last 20 years your suspicions within the bin raised, your antenna would have gone up